Cd Rom

As the first guy to put the sun at the center of the solar system, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was a revolutionary, and he lived just long enough to see his observations bound in a hand-lettered book. Now a Palo Alto company is using state-of-the-art technology to preserve such ancient and rare books on CD-ROM, and sell them in the electronic marketplace for about the price of a hardback.

On one side of the small, smoky office sat a former Tel Aviv police officer, now working in copyright enforcement for the Israeli music industry. On the other, the owners of a Palestinian factory reputed to be churning out thousands of bootleg compact discs a day. Across a steel desk cluttered with overflowing ashtrays, tiny cups of sweet coffee and plates of baklava, the men spent nearly three hours one recent evening trading accusations. Then the Palestinians made a startling offer.

Limited sales and bruising competition forced Purple Moon, a pioneer of the girls' games genre, to close its doors last week and lay off all its employees. The Mountain View, Calif.-based creator of CD-ROM titles for 8-to-12-year-olds said in a statement that increased consolidation in the video game industry was a primary reason for its decision. Ironically, this consolidation is being driven largely by a broadening of the video game market to include categories such as girls' games.

Amateur photographers will soon be able to get their pictures stored on CD-ROM as easily as developing a roll of film into prints, as Eastman Kodak Co. rolls out its Picture CD product nationwide. But it will cost about $9 more a roll for the novelty of having a photofinishing store computerize their traditional snapshots. Kodak, which developed the Picture CD along with Intel Corp.

Laguna Beach High School appears to be the first in Orange County to go with a high-tech version of alumni memories, offering students a yearbook on CD-ROM this year. In a few years, when today's Laguna Beach seniors go for a stroll down memory lane, they will have the option of turning the pages of a traditional paper yearbook or clicking on an icon.

A Castaic man was charged Friday with four counts of allegedly selling obscene CD-ROMs depicting bestiality and scatology to undercover Los Angeles police officers at a computer show at the Sherman Oaks Entertainment Center in September. Marshall Jay Lefcourt, 45, allegedly sold CD-ROMs to investigators who viewed them on a computer in a police vehicle parked outside the venue, according to Los Angeles City prosecutor Lynn Magnandonovan.

Yearbooks, you remember them--those musty, leather-bound tomes memorializing school days in staged black-and-white group shots and senior quotes. Increasingly, these quaint paper artifacts aren't enough for some teens weaned on computer games and the World Wide Web. Many want something a little more high-tech from their high school memorabilia. Enter the CD-ROM, the latest trend in nontraditional yearbooks.

Leave the Beanie Babies and Teletubbies on the store shelves. Forget about the latest Nintendo and Sega games. At least, that's what your child's teacher would probably like to say. If many educators had their wish, parents would ignore the latest toy craze this holiday season in favor of some fun but more educational gifts that stimulate their children's creativity and encourage exploration.

Buy it. Buy it now. In fact, buy six--someday they might be worth something. That's the unstated pitch some record companies are using to sell readily-available albums by presenting them as collectibles or fleeting "limited editions." And they're dangling some big names--the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Queen and, most prominently, the season's seemingly ubiquitous Garth Brooks.

Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, Mr. Fix-It, Bugdozer--when "Busytown" children's artist and writer Richard Scarry died in 1994, he left behind a world of creations beloved by young children for decades. That intricately detailed world of gentle learning and comic, anthropomorphic animal folk, however, lives on in books, videos, on television and most recently in CD-ROMs. It keeps growing, thanks to another professional artist.